Boulder Valley makes changes to comply with healthy lunch rules

The Boulder Valley School District already added salad bars in every school cafeteria, nixed most processed food and removed foods with added trans fats.

But the new, prescriptive USDA school lunch guidelines still required changes to the district's lunch menus.

School chefs spent a couple of months over the summer reworking recipes, while suppliers were asked to reconfigure some products. The district also is adding new items to up the kid appeal of its healthier lunches.

"It's been a wild three months trying to figure this all out," said Ann Cooper, Boulder Valley's nutrition services director.

Jane Brand, director of the Colorado Department of Education's nutrition unit, is working with districts to help them meet the new requirements, which call for more fruit, more vegetables and more whole grains than in the past.

"It's like this huge puzzle, and districts are working hard to put all the pieces together," she said. "The changes are what we should be doing, but it can take some time and effort."

The food offered each week must fit into daily and weekly nutrition guidelines that vary by grade level -- and make sense from a production standpoint. In Boulder Valley, roast chicken, for example, is usually offered at the end of the week because thawing and roasting takes several days.

School districts that comply with the new guidelines will receive an additional 6-cents-per-meal reimbursement from the federal government, which adds up to about $65,000 for Boulder Valley.

Cooper said that, while she supports the USDA changes, there are unintended consequences. One is that districts must convince suppliers to change their products so they fit the new rules.

The district's wheat tortillas, for example, must be smaller this year. The district also had to change its taco filling recipe, adding vegetables and beans and reducing the amount of meat, while also making sure it would still appeal to kid palates.

"It's a real balance with getting the kids what they want and meeting these new guidelines," Cooper said.

Ensuring that the healthier choices are still tasty is key to the district's effort to entice more students to buy school lunch, making up for the revenue lost from no-longer-offered a la carte items, such as cookies.

Now, about 38 percent of elementary students and 31 percent of middle school students buy a district lunch. The goal is 40 to 45 percent at elementary and 35 percent at middle schools.

The district's efforts include adding several new menu items, such as nitrate-free pepperoni pizza, potstickers from Boulder County-based Sisters' Pantry, tamales and a meatball sub. The district also is making all its salad dressing from scratch and is including baked french fries -- both regular and sweet potato -- on the menu.

Then there are new items based on the winners of the district's "Iron chef-"style student cooking competitions, such as Centennial Middle School's chicken po'boy sandwich and Columbine Elementary's chicken pesto sandwich.

There's a meatless option every day, gluten-free items are noted on the menus and parents signed up for allergy alerts get emails if there's a product or menu change.

Having salad bars in every school also is proving to be a boon in meeting the guidelines.

The salad bars allow the district to offer a variety of fruit and vegetables to meet new requirements to provide vegetables from various groups each week -- dark green, red/orange, legumes and starchy. All meals now also must include either a half cup of fruit or vegetables.

In the neighboring St. Vrain Valley School District, nutrition Director Shelly Allen said district changes in recent years meant the menus were in good shape overall. Changes needed included increasing the portion of fruits and vegetables at high schools, adding more vegetable varieties and reducing the size of bread products.

"We've had to spend so much time tracking to make sure everything matches up with the guidelines," she said. "Overall, we try to make sure it's really good product that the kids will eat."